Canadian Government Executive - Volume 23 - Issue 09

January 25 & 26, 2018 Ottawa, ON leanagility.com/en/leangovernmentsummit_2018 CANADIAN LEAN GOVERNMENT SUMMIT Presented by: Thought provoking dis cus s ion to improve how government works : Lean, systems thinking and evidence-based decision making in government Kevin Page, Founding President and CEO, Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy, former Parliamentary Budget Officer Eliminate failure demand and deliver faster service John Seddon: Author of Systems Thinking in the Public Sector and Freedom from Command and Control Create world-class performance with the Harada Method Norman Bodek, President, PCS Press, Co-founder, Shingo Prize Deliver better HR services 80% faster and create an improvement culture Caroline Dunn, Director General, Human Resources Branch, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada Lean IT: Deliver less software and delight your clients Craig Szelestowski, President & Founder, Lean Agility Inc. Lean & Agile Case Study at Statistics Canada Geoff Bowlby, Director General of Collection and Regional Services, Statistics Canada Aligning regional processes Mark Jarvis, Senior Consultant, Lean Agility Inc. Lean Leadership for Government Jacob Stoller, Author "The Lean CEO" December 2017 // Canadian Government Executive / 25 Which institutions and situations value what you do? “You’ve got to pick the environment that works for you…. Con- text is so important. The unfiltered leader who is an amazing suc- cess in one situation will be a catastrophic failure in the other, in almost all cases,” Mukunda says. You have been successful be- cause you have been in environments suitable for your success, not because of your unique brilliance. That’s the story of the valedictorians. They had no problem get- ting A’s in school. That was a context they excelled in. But they weren’t as successful when they moved to a different career en- vironment. Picking the right pond also applies when Barker tackles the ques- tion of whether nice guys finish first. They do and they don’t. Some- times jerks thrive. Sometimes nice guys excel, as AdamGrant showed in his bookGive andTake. If that isn’t confusing enough, Barker notes that pirates often treated each other well – theywere democratic and trusted one another. Blackbeard didn’t kill anyone, and there is no record of anyone walking the plank on a pirate ship. But their blood- thirsty image helped convince targets to give in quickly. Barker offers this advice: • Pick the right pond: A pirate’s den may be fine, a snake pit is not. Take a long look at the people you will be working with, as over the long term you will become like them. • Co-operate first: Offer favours to others, and over time they will reciprocate, research suggest. In negotiations, Harvard Business Professor Deepak Malhotra stresses the other side needs to like you. That’s more critical than being tough or showing the other side you mean business. • Being selfless isn’t saintly, it’s silly: Trusting others works best in general, but for a specific interaction you can’t predict how successful co-operating will be. A study on the power of trust found that most successful people ranked themselves an eight – web http://canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca/author/harveys/ The Leader’s Bookshelf not a 10 – on a 10-point scale in terms of how much they trusted others. If others seem to always take from you, don’t retaliate. Instead, gossip – tell others about them. You will feel better and it helps to police their bad behaviour. • Work hard but make sure it gets noticed: Jerks self-promote. You need to as well. Be visible. Your boss needs to like you. Every Friday, he suggests sending your boss a quick email on what has been accomplished this week. • Think long-term: Bad behaviour can win in the short term but over the long term good behaviour wins out. • Forgive: Writing people off can result in this complicated world from lack of clarity. So ease up. “You’re not perfect, others aren’t perfect, and sometimes people get confused,” he says. The book lacks simple answers, as Barker takes us through the twists and turns on the issues he decided to investigate. But he’s a smooth, clear writer, gliding you through the contradictory ideas, and as the end of each chapter has a handy, practical summary, as with the example above about whether nice guys finish first. H arvey S chachter is a writer, specializing in management and business issues. He writes three weekly columns for the Globe and Mail and The Leader’s Bookshelf column for Canadian Government Executive, and a regular column and features for Kingston Life magazine. Harvey was editor of the 2004 book Memos to the Prime Minister: What Canada Can Be in the 21st Century. He was the ghostwriter on The Three Pillars of Pub- lic Management by Ole Ingstrup and Paul Crookall, and editor of Getting Clients, Keeping Clients by Dan Richards.